from a nonconstantian and postmodern perspective

This is just WRONG

In case you hadn’t heard/read this elsewhere, a church in Joplin Missouri raffled off 2 AR-15 semi-automatic rifles.

While I cannot say I am surprised, I will tell you I am appalled.

Not only does this support gambling – yes, raffles are gambling – but look deeper into what is going on here.

This particular raffle was, the article says, for fathers only:

the church gave area fathers an opportunity to put their names in a free drawing to win one of two AR-15 rifles. Fathers could get tickets for each child they brought to church, and for bringing his own dad to church.

It seems only fair to me that if a church is going to invite people to gamble for guns, they ought not be sexist about it.

8 thoughts on “This is just WRONG”

Ignite is to be applauded for creatively engaging and seeking to reach creatively a demographic that so many churches find so very difficult to reach! The is no negative to the raffle as it was free. And on the positive side it allow the church to develop contact information for later follow up.

I’m actually with the blogger on this one. The disconnect between claiming to follow the Prince of Peace and raffling off the tools of war is too great. Why do we think it’s appropriate for a church to be handing out free weapons that are designed with no other purpose than to take a life?

The rifles featured in the raffle are not combat weapons. They are common sporting rifles routinely used for recreational sport shooting, both informal and formal target shooting and competition and hunting. To suppose that the rifles offered in this raffle are somehow to be styled as “tools of war” is as illogical as supposing that something as common as a hatchet or axe, a fixed blade hunting knife or a baseball bat or a golf club or a computer is to be equated with a weapon simply because people have put such things to criminal use. Indeed there are many who follow Christ as the Lord of their life who also with complete integrity uses various sorts of hatchets and axes, rifles, knives, baseball bats, golf clubs and even computers, all in such a way that Christ is glorified. It is misguided to condemn inanimate objects as though they wield themselves, which they do not. The problem is that the heart of man is apart from Christ lost in sin and depraved. It is out of the heart that evil comes.

So what are you advocating is “just WRONG” here? The guns, the gambling or the sexist gambling? If it’s the guns then I totally agree with you, active violence IS wrong. Someone needs take some action against a church like this. We should take the premeditated time to fashion an effective whip and go in there and smash some stuff up. I bet that’d get our message of peace across…not that I agree with betting in any way. Wait, what?

Because nothing is “free” Josh. Everything comes at a cost. When you gamble, free or not, it costs you your soul and for this you burn. Saved or not, you burn with Hitler and Satan and sheyduck…he’s a dick.